Uptown Blues

by Seth Pevey

  “And there she was,” Melph told the eager detectives.

  And there she was, striding across the grass and landing, somehow, right next to his unfolded lawn chair. Pretty nails and long lashes and dirty sandals, some rugged loveliness about her. He had assumed she was a friend of one of the guys’ wives. Not the right thing to do, to assume, but something about that green dress, something about the twangy talk and the way she ate chicken wings with lipstick on, that had made it easy.

  “So, when you met her, you didn’t know she was Andre’s mother?” Melancon asked.

  Melph gave the old yat a cold look. “I’m telling it now. Shut up and listen, damnit.” He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray, lit another.

  She had come on strong. A country girl who, it seemed like, didn’t know a thing about big city living, even though (and get this) her name was Nola. Melph loved that—being a tour guide for civilization. It made him feel like he had protected and saved something valuable back in the Marines, and now this was his reward, getting to show it all off. He liked taking her by the hand to lead her to this or that thing, while she stared wide-eyed like it was all the first time. The live oaks, the belting brass, the bright colors on the squashed-together shotguns stretching down the block. She loved to drink, tequila on the rocks and wine and gin, and could usually handle it. She could cook too. That didn’t require any civilization. Crawfish and gumbo and red beans and tamales and pecan pie. She was zesty and full of fire, even for a middle-aged woman like that. And in the bedroom, she—

  “You aren’t answering the question. Answer the question. Did you know who she was?” Janine demanded.

  “No, I had no idea who she was, okay? You think I would have fucked with her if I knew she was Renato’s ex-wife?”

  It was true, he hadn’t had the faintest idea. He’d never even really noticed anything strange about her way of disappearing whenever Andre or Renato came around. Maybe she was just taking things slow. Maybe she just wasn’t ready. But still, she had her way of getting quickly quiet when their names were mentioned. She refused, secondhand, his sister Lashawn’s many invites to come to family dinner. They all wanted to meet the new girlfriend, for her to be a part of things. It was no wonder.

  Love will blind you.

  “Yes, I said love, damnit,” he told the gawking detectives, without provocation.

  Melancon cocked his head and nodded thoughtfully.

  “Love?” he said.

  “Love,” Melph said.

  Some nights they would stay in, lie in bed and drink and listen to playlists Melph would make special for those nights. She liked jazz and blues and hip hop and she would sometimes get so overwhelmed with it that she would stand up and dance by the closed window, the levee train rattling the house as it passed by the river.

  Happy times, last summer.

  “Then came the fall,” Melph said.

  One autumn evening, after they had cleaned off two bottles of red wine and were lying in bed listening to music, she’d turned and paused the playlist, asked him suddenly if he trusted her.

  There was an awkward silence in the interrogation room for a second. Melph looked down at the long ash that had crawled up his neglected smoke.

  “Did you trust her?” Melancon asked.

  “I told her I did.”

  “But did you?”

  “Just listen.”

  What had followed that night was a very long and very sad story about Nola’s past. Melph had heard these types of stories before, but this one was truly black and pitiful. She’d taken a whole third bottle of merlot to tell it and by the end had been weeping and sobbing. In the story, she, as a young and innocent girl from a small town, fell in love with a truly wicked man. The man was the local beau—handsome and charming and well liked. But these virtues and charms didn’t survive the first few years of marital life. Their time together soon turned into a cruel and abusive nightmare. He was cold, distant, prone to spells of violence and rage. To make matters worse, she had twice been pregnant, and twice given birth to this man’s sons. While she loved the two boys unconditionally, the relationship between man and wife had soon become untenable. One of the boys, the youngest, would pass away at only two years old, further straining everything.

  “Andre had a brother?”

  Melph raised his eyebrows. “She said that he died, ten years ago. Maybe Andre doesn’t remember. I don’t know, since the little dude don’t say shit.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Nola didn’t say and I damn sure didn’t ask.”

  “Go on.”

  “So anyway, she tells me this long story. She says the man beat her, cut her. She even showed me a scar on her neck where she said that he cut her.”

  “Same scar as Andre’s got?”

  “I didn’t think of it that way, not at first, anyway. I didn’t make that connection. The way she told it, this mean bastard took her son away from her and ran off. Stole him right out from under her and left her alone way out in the sticks.”

  Telling the story seemed to have taken a toll on Nola. She’d passed out that night in a puddle of her own tears, the wine staining her usually white teeth. But Melph hadn’t been able to stop turning the story over in his head. His love, though, had made him stop just short of questioning it, of questioning her. Still, he’d lain wide-eyed in bed for hours after hearing the tale, Nola sleeping her wine-heavy sleep on his numb shoulder.

  In the cold light of day, she’d been embarrassed, asked him to forget it, to never repeat what he had heard.

  But something had changed in her. She’d gotten a little colder somehow, quit cooking as much, drank less around him and became more reserved. He hadn’t seen her for a few days after that. But she came back. They kept seeing each other, all the way through winter and into the new year.

  “I have a resolution,” she’d said to Melph, as they kissed out on the dance floor at the Maple Leaf bar, “Auld Lang Syne” being sung by a mix of junkies and college kids on a beer-sticky floor. But she wouldn’t say what it was.

  The first time she’d asked about Andre, the two lovers had been riding in the car towards downtown New Orleans. Somewhere on St. Charles, they had passed Renato driving his streetcar back towards the Seventeenth Ward. Melph had pointed him out, honked his horn, and kept on driving as if nothing special had happened.

  “Who is that?” Nola asked.

  “Sister’s husband,” he answered.

  “He’s got a son, right? A boy?”

  “How’d you know that, Nola?”

  “The boy. Is he…alright?”

  From there, she’d begun to ask about Andre constantly. About his life, who he was, what he was doing. For weeks it went on. She wanted to know every detail about his horn and his silence, his lack of friends, his infatuation with Louis Armstrong, his shrink appointments and the high-brow Hispanic he took lessons from twice a week. At first, Melph had just figured that the girl had a terminal case of the baby rabies. That was why she was interested, surely. He reckoned that it was just her way of dropping hints about their own future progeny, trying to figure out if Melph was the fatherly type or not. She was at about the age where it would soon be too late. That fact, coupled with her sad story about her child being taken away from her—

  “I just figured it was the motherhood instinct type of deal. So, I told her all about my little nephew. I didn’t think she was being very subtle, but still, I told her every detail. I thought it was weird, but I guess I was also glad she was interested. I was getting to think…well…”

  “Well, what?” Melancon asked.

  “Stupid. I was stupid. It doesn’t matter. What happened next is what happened next. One evening she went out, left her purse. It was lying tipped over on the bed. I went to pick it up and there, inside but come spilling out, was a picture of her. A lot younger, a lot prettier. It was with her and a little tiny boy… a toddler…I thought I recognized…but I couldn’t be sure.”

  He’d fallen a
sleep trying to understand it, telling himself a lot of little kids looked alike at that age. Still, he’d left the picture out on the bedside table, waiting.

  That was when Melph Jones found himself waking up with a wild-eyed Nola straddling him, something cold and sharp pressed just below his Adam’s apple.

  A dreamy part of him, for a moment, thought she was playing, being kinky. He even tried to grab her around the waist but—

  “Don’t move,” she said. “Don’t even blink.”

  He didn’t, remembering the picture again suddenly.

  “Look at me.”

  So, he looked. He saw her completely, as if for the first time. The lipstick she wore, even to bed. The pain in her eyes that maybe he had minimized or wished away for far too long. The way she ground her teeth and the way her hand trembled holding that razor’s edge so close into his neck, so close to his jugular vein.

  “I see you, Nola,” he said. His voice didn’t waver or crack.

  “Do you?”

  “I…”

  “I’ve made up my mind, Melph.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You do, don’t you?”

  “Shit.”

  “Melph, listen to me. I’m not going to wait anymore.”

  “Okay,” he said. “What’s that got to do with my neck?”

  “I’m going to kill him,” she said.

  “Kill who?”

  “Melph, listen to me. Look at me. You can’t be that stupid.”

  “Kill who, Nola?” he repeated. He’d known killers, seen people killed, and he knew, or thought he knew, that she wasn’t that type. Was she? But the pain in his neck was not open to questioning. The more she trembled, the more that blade trembled against the thin skin, the only thing keeping his blood where it was supposed to be and not spurting out across the bedroom.

  “Did you even listen? When I told you about my ex-husband? Did you even listen, when I told you about my son? He took him, do you understand? He took him and he brought him down here and he has some shit on me that you can never understand, not in a million years. So, I’m here to get my boy back. I’m going to get my boy back the only way I know how. I’m going to get him back and I’m going to help him. We’re going to live off of his gift. I’m going to take him places where he won’t get to go no other way.”

  “Woman, I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” he said, lying completely helpless under the razor. He tried to squirm, but she pressed that edge into him until he could feel a rivulet of blood running down onto his shirt.

  Maybe he had known it all along. Maybe he had. Just smart enough. Maybe all that patience, all that meditation, all that time spent in circles remembering the thick shit and what it meant, maybe that had done a number on Melph Jones. It was amazing, the way the human mind could block out entire things it just didn’t want to see, that protective mechanism kicking in so complete and final.

  It had hit him then. But really, he had known it all along. Finally. He looked up at her. The avoidance, the repeated questions about Andre, her sudden appearance at the park that day.

  She nodded to him.

  “That’s right,” she said, seeing in his eyes that he knew it, recognized it, embraced it. “Finally.”

  “What the fuck, Nola?”

  “I just want you to know that if you tell them anything about me, when all this dust settles, you’ll be digging your own grave. I had to get close to them, without them knowing I was close.”

  “What are you going to—”

  “That’s my boy,” she said. “Wherever he’s going, I’m going there too.”

  “This whole time?”

  “This whole time.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, you dumb motherfucker. It was the only way, the only way I could get Andre back. You’re sweet, and you are good looking. But it ain’t about you, Melph, it never was.”

  “But if he really beat you and cut you, then—”

  “Listen to me. The evidence of everything. It’s going to be all over. I’ve got your rifle. I’ve got your fingerprints on it. On the shells. On other stuff too. I’ve hid these things from you, Melph. But no one ever has to know.”

  “But I know. Why do I have to know?”

  “You’re a part of this now, Melph.”

  In the tiny white smoke-filled interrogation room, the yat’s eyes widened, and he shook his head.

  Melph cleared his throat, took a sip of the coffee they had brought him.

  “And then she was gone. And it happened before I could… before I could do anything. And that’s about the long and the short of it. I tried to clear everything out, everything to do with her. But there was just too much. That’s what I was doing when Andre took off. She had left little bread crumb trails all over the place…and there was no way to…well, here I am anyway. That’s it.”

  “Hell of a story, partner,” Melancon said.

  “You don’t believe me,” Melph said. “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t believe the shit myself except it happened.”

  Melph pointed to a little nick in his neck. He picked up the B&H cigarettes and let them slap back down on the table, made a dismissive brushing motion at the shells.

  Melancon raised his chin. “So, you figured you were going to kill her before she could try to frame you? Or was it more that you wanted to save us out of the kindness of your heart?”

  “No. I did what I did for Andre. After it happened, he was my responsibility and I dropped the ball. I tried to go dump some of her stuff in the river. Stuff I thought she might use to frame me. But I didn’t get it all. Hell, not even most of it. Signs of her were all over my house. She even painted my door, to my bedroom, that same color as her lipstick. And Andre… well, in the Marines, you never leave a man behind, and I wasn’t about to let my little nephew end up with that crazy-ass woman. Especially when he’s crazy himself. So, I did what I had to do. I couldn’t come to y’all, with my DNA and whatnot on everything.”

  “And now you just reckon we’ll turn you loose?”

  “No.” Melph shook his head. “Whatever happens to me happens. It’s my fault for being so blind.”

  “Tell us about what happened tonight,” Janine said, leaning in.

  “Andre’s phone,” he said, pointing to a bulge in the old detective’s coat.

  “What?”

  “Find My Phone. Ever heard of it, old man? You were carrying around a tracking device the whole time you were out looking for my nephew. I just followed you. I guess Nola got the code or whatever from my phone, did some tracking of her own. Lashawn had installed it on my shit years ago, to help her keep track of where Andre was.”

  Melancon took the offending item out of his pocket and looked at it, aghast. “Not my finest hour, I suppose,” he mumbled to himself as he placed it down on the table near the cigarettes and shell casings.

  “So you followed them to the park, then what?” Janine asked.

  “This old yat was there, why don’t you let him tell it?”

  “Because I’d rather hear it from you.”

  “Well, I climbed up on the coaster with my night scope. I saw her holding you guys at shotgun point. I knew what was fixing to happen. I tried to just wing her, in the leg, like. She started firing that scattergun just blind out into the night. Then she ran off into the swamp. Wherever she is, she’s not feeling too good right now. I hope she’s dead, I really do. It’s better this way, better for Andre. I don’t know. If she got away with it, maybe she would have had some legal claim on the boy. Not now, I guess. I don’t know what’s going to happen to him now, but whatever it is, it’s better than being with her.”

  Melancon stood up, “Let’s give the guy a break, Janine. I need to check on the kid.”

  “What’s going to happen to Andre?” Melph Jones asked. “If Lashawn doesn’t get any better, what’s going to become of him?”

  “We don’t know, it depends on—” Melancon was cut off by Janine raising a finge
r as she put her phone to her ear.

  “Got it,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “They found her. Dead in the swamp from blood loss.”

  Melph Jones leaned back and breathed out a long exhalation. He stuck his hands out to Melancon in surrender, ready to be cuffed, looking the old detective dead in his blue eyes.

  Twenty-Three

  Six Months Later

  Tomás de Valencia was sitting in one of the finest hotel rooms he had ever been in, carefully tying a bow tie around his neck, when the phone rang.

  The official voice on the other end of the line used his full name. Tomás listened to the news as he wheeled himself over to the floor-to-ceiling-window, overlooking a verdant summertime Central Park below.

  When he put the receiver back down in its cradle again, a look of pure joy came over his face.

  “Boys, boys!” he shouted to the adjoining bedroom. “Let us leave early. Take the scenic route, if you don’t mind. I’m nearly ready.”

  Tomás had never seen a city like this in all his days. He was overwhelmed by the granite and steel of it, like a mountain broken apart and put back together by millions of tireless hands. To be between the buildings was like being in a deep gray valley with no end in either direction. And the people! It was five o’clock, the time of ants marching. The humanity poured forth from every open door, hugging the sidewalks with purpose in their movements, their bodies draped in dark tones and their faces shrouded behind tinted sunglasses. New York City—it smelled like trash and urine and sizzling sidewalks and the spices and herbs of every nation on earth. Crowds were everywhere: underfoot and overhead, coming up from tunnels zigzagging below the earth and down from glinting glass elevators. An exotic place, but thoroughly American, he decided. It was nothing like New Orleans, like a different and opposite pole of the same heavenly body. The speed of things, the hurriedness, the rough edge, and the wealth that made even the Avenue pale in comparison—all of it was enough to make Tomás feel like a grain of sand awash on an inestimably broad beach.